Startup Snapshot - Catching Up with our Portfolio Companies in April 2025

Through an active and methodic Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) program, Cisco continues to foster cutting-edge technology start-ups. Our venture capital effort is enabling a tight bridge between young but mighty technologies and a vibrant Cisco ecosystem of customers, sellers, and internal product teams.

New Investments

Opanga offers cutting-edge solutions designed to optimize mobile data traffic, enhancing network efficiency and user experience. By leveraging advanced algorithms, Opanga empowers carriers to manage data more effectively, ensuring smooth and reliable connectivity. Discover more in their latest press release.

RSA 2025

Discover innovative solutions from Cisco Investments' portfolio companies at the RSA Conference (RSAC), one of the world’s leading cybersecurity events. This annual gathering brings together industry leaders, practitioners, and innovators to explore cutting-edge trends in information security, featuring keynotes, technical sessions, and a comprehensive expo floor. Learn how to engage with these companies and explore their offerings in our blog, "Know Before You Go: RSAC 2025."

Artificial Intelligence

Anthropic announced ‘Code with Claude’, its inaugural developer conference, scheduled for May 22, 2025, in San Francisco. This hands-on event will explore real-world implementations and best practices using Anthropic's API, CLI tools, and Model Context Protocol (MCP). Attendees will engage in interactive workshops, hear from Anthropic's executive and product teams, and connect with a community of developers building with Claude.

Cohere discussed the potential of autonomous and secure AI agents in regulated industries. These agents promise to revolutionize workflows by automating complex tasks and enhancing productivity. Implementing such AI solutions enables organizations to maintain compliance while leveraging advanced technologies.

Groq partnered with PlayAI to integrate the Dialog text-to-speech model into GroqCloud™, achieving processing speeds of up to 140 characters per second. This collaboration enhances real-time voice applications by delivering faster and more natural-sounding speech synthesis. Developers can now build end-to-end voice applications fully powered by Groq.

Scale AI enhanced its Evaluation platform by introducing advanced analytics and visualization capabilities. These updates enable teams to identify model weaknesses more efficiently and make confident release decisions. The platform now offers instant model comparison, multi-dimensional performance visualization, automated error discovery, and targeted improvement guidance.

Cloud and Data Center

HYCU’s Global Partner Program was recognized with 5-star status by the Channel Company's CRN magazine. This annual guide is an essential resource for solution providers seeking vendor partner programs that match their business goals and deliver high partner value.

Collaboration

Aisera led a benchmark study comparing domain-specific AI agents vs. general-purpose AI agents built on foundational models. The results show that domain-specific AI agents came out on top—proving that specialization drives better value and performance in enterprise applications.

Theta Lake expanded its product suite with pioneering capabilities spanning all digital communications governance and archiving use cases. The update introduced support for AI-powered translation, summarization, and explainability. These additions help organizations embrace modern collaboration tools while maintaining compliance and reducing risk.

Uniphore's ActionIQ was recognized in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Customer Data Platforms for its composable architecture, proof-of-concept methodology, and flexible data collaboration. These strengths position ActionIQ to meet evolving enterprise requirements, including AI enablement and real-time data activation.

Networking

Aliro announced the live deployment of the first AliroNet® Quickstart quantum network. This new network is designed and built to support a variety of applications such as quantum secure communications, networking of quantum processor units, interconnectivity of quantum sensors, and future qubit-based applications.

Aviz Networks hosted the "Mastering AI-Optimized Networking: Cisco 8000 + Aviz ONES SONiC Bootcamp." This event provided insights into deploying SONiC on Cisco 8000 series hardware and demonstrated AI-driven observability with Aviz ONES. Participants gained practical knowledge on enhancing network performance for AI workloads.

Enfabrica explored the integration of Software Defined Networking (SDN) principles into Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) networks to enhance scalability and flexibility in large-scale AI infrastructures. By decoupling network control from data forwarding functions, this approach allows data center operators to manage GPU clusters more efficiently, addressing the unique demands of AI workloads.

Security

Binalyze spotlighted how its AIR platform is transforming Security Operations Centers (SOCs) to be smarter, faster, and more resilient. The blog detailed how AIR addresses challenges like alert fatigue and fragmented workflows through automated investigation and streamlined forensic analysis. These capabilities help SOC teams accelerate response times and strengthen cyber resilience.

Corellium collaborated with Lauterbach to advance software-defined vehicle (SDV) development through high-speed virtualization. This partnership enables automotive software developers to build, test, and debug applications in the cloud before physical hardware is available. By virtualizing the Arm Reference Design-1 AE (RD-1 AE) automotive platform, developers can accelerate time-to-market and enhance software precision.

Island developed the Backward Compatibility Analyzer to maintain API stability during rapid development. This tool detects potential breaking changes by analyzing API schemas and comparing them against baseline versions. Integrating this analyzer into the development workflow enables teams to innovate swiftly without compromising existing client integrations.

Secure Code Warrior unveiled Quests, a learning platform designed to enhance developers' secure coding skills through curated, goal-oriented paths. Quests offers interactive activities and hands-on challenges to help developers identify and prevent vulnerabilities. This approach enables organizations to reduce risk, optimize development lifecycles, and exceed compliance requirements.

SGNL rolled out support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP), allowing enterprises to adopt AI-powered automation securely. MCP facilitates integration between AI agents and real-world tools, while SGNL’s platform ensures these agents operate within strict access controls to prevent unauthorized data exposure. This integration empowers organizations to leverage AI capabilities without compromising security or compliance.

StrongDM explained the distinction between Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) and Single Sign-On (SSO). While SAML is an open standard facilitating the exchange of authentication and authorization data between identity providers and service providers, SSO is an authentication process allowing users to access multiple applications with a single set of login credentials.

Upstream Security emphasized the importance of AI-powered cybersecurity in protecting connected farming ecosystems. As agriculture increasingly adopts connected and autonomous technologies, robust cybersecurity measures are essential to safeguard operations and data integrity. Implementing such protections enables the agricultural sector to innovate securely and maintain resilience against cyber threats.